Banks Los Angeles

Silicon Valley Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of Silicon Valley Bancshares, has opened its first office in Los Angeles to lend to growing technology companies. Silicon Valley, which already has offices in San Diego and Irvine, lends to growing mid-sized companies primarily in the technology and science industries. The bank had a small office in Los Angeles that focused on entertainment, but that division will move to the new office in West Los Angeles.

First Vietnamese American Bank in Orange County was shut down by regulators Friday night, five years after opening as the first U.S. bank with a core clientele of Vietnamese immigrants. The seizure in the Little Saigon neighborhood of Westminster brought the number of failed banks nationwide this year to 143, surpassing the 140 recorded last year and marking the most since the recession year of 1992, when the savings and loan debacle was winding down. The 2010 total includes three other banks that went under Friday: Western Commercial Bank, a small-business lender in Woodland Hills, and community banks in Tacoma, Wash.

The bank executives trooping into Doug Boyd's conference room to discuss a new advertising campaign seemed right at home. Maybe that's because the Melrose Avenue graphic arts office they were visiting used to be a bank. Its conference room is in the vault. Inside there, Boyd speculates, "they felt safe." And it's safe to say they aren't the only ones who are looking at bank vaults in a whole new way these days.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) on Friday defended her efforts to help minority-owned banks -- including one with ties to her husband -- scoffing at the notion that she, a liberal Democrat, could influence the Bush administration in deciding what financial institutions would receive bailout funds.

Shortly after Wells Fargo Bank closed a branch office last year on West 43rd Place, joining the exodus of financial institutions out of South Los Angeles, a pawnshop moved onto the site and began doing a brisk business lending money to customers at annual interest rates of 42% and higher. The firm, 43rd Place Collateral Lenders, which sports a sophisticated computer system and a large, modern showroom, now makes an average of 70 loans a day.

With the air of contestants who have parlayed their consolation prize into a grand jackpot, local officials Tuesday ceremoniously launched the Los Angeles Community Development Bank, a federally funded, locally created lending institution designed to bring jobs and prosperity to some of the area's most impoverished neighborhoods.

Directors of the emerging Los Angeles Community Development Bank, under pressure to open the doors of the massive jobs-stimulating institution, on Tuesday will announce the hiring of a veteran community and economic development leader as the bank's first chief executive. The selection of C. Robert Kemp as chief executive officer comes nearly 1 1/2 years after Los Angeles officials and the Clinton administration set out to boost the economies of the city's poorest neighborhoods.

Reorganized as a bank in 1991 from the ashes of a failed savings and loan, Founders National Bank's mission has been to help capital-starved South-Central Los Angeles businesses and residents pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Now it's the bank that needs a lift. Last week's earthquake hammered the bank's main offices in South-Central Los Angeles, causing severe structural damage and delaying the bank's expansion and lending plans.

The U.S. Energy Department will deposit $22 million in minority-owned financial institutions in Los Angeles, said U.S. Energy Secretary James D. Watkins. Another $15 million will be deposited in minority-owned banks in other parts of California. The plan is part of a nationwide Energy Department program under which $250 million will be deposited in banks owned by minorities and women around the country to help stimulate economic development.

Fed OKs Bank Branch in L.A.: The U.S. Federal Reserve Board has approved an application by the Bank of Taiwan to establish a state-licensed branch in Los Angeles. The Bank of Taiwan's branch will be its second office in the United States. Separately, the Fed has approved an application by Chiao Tung Bank of Taipei, Taiwan, to establish a state-licensed agency in New York City. The Chiao Tung Bank already operates a state-licensed branch in San Jose.

With so many banks changing in this age of financial mergers, one institution, at least, seemed safe: The Gilmore Bank on 3rd Street, as coolly minimalist and modern as the Farmers Market next door is folksy and quaint. The Gilmore family, which owns the Farmers Market and chartered the bank in 1955, has long resisted overtures to sell. Its permanence seemed further assured by a $1.5-million remodel five years ago that kept intact its original red brick, birch wood and terrazzo state.

The troubled Los Angeles Community Development Bank on Friday lost the first of several lawsuits filed by former borrowers, a blow that could signal millions of dollars in taxpayer losses and further damage to the publicly funded lender. In a decision issued Friday, Superior Court Judge William J. Birney found the bank breached its contractual responsibility to its borrower and "directly caused the total loss" of Summit Industries, a manufacturer of counter tops and sinks. Birney awarded $7.

A lot is riding on efforts to help the Los Angeles Community Development Bank rebound from its troubled past. And much of the hope for a turnaround rests with a driven man with a ready laugh who left his native Hong Kong alone at age 16 to become a banker. William H. Chu took charge of the Community Development Bank last week, becoming the first chief executive with commercial lending experience to head the federally funded institution since it was launched four years ago.

State banking regulators seized the Los Angeles subsidiary of an Indonesian bank that was closed by Indonesian authorities. The California Department of Financial Institutions took over the Los Angeles agency of PT Bank Dagang Nasional Indonesia, the only U.S. branch of the bank, which was one of three large banks shut down by the Indonesian government in an effort to stabilize that country's financial system. The Los Angeles bank's books show assets of $63 million and liabilities of $54.

Sang Brown is a 78-year-old African American who still lives in the South-Central Los Angeles house he purchased half a century ago and still banks at the same black-owned bank that loaned him the money: Broadway Federal Savings. Brown is not a man who likes change, but change is all around him. His neighborhood, once almost exclusively black, now has a majority of Latinos--and so does his Broadway Federal branch on 45th Street. The branch manager is from the Dominican Republic.

Western Bancorp on Friday said it agreed to buy Bank of Los Angeles for about $92.5 million in stock, expanding its reach in the Los Angeles area. Western, the Newport Beach-based parent of Santa Monica Bank and Southern California Bank, has $2.1 billion in assets and 29 branches in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. Bank of Los Angeles will add $275 million in assets and six branches.

Parents Blame Son's Murder on Bank: Wells Fargo Bank was sued in Los Angeles Superior Court Wednesday by an Oregon couple, Frank and Susan Chase, who contend that their son, Mathew Marshall Chase, was kidnaped and fatally shot because of poor security and negligence. In June, 1988, 22-year-old Chase disappeared after he went to a Wells Fargo branch in Los Angeles to make a deposit at an automated teller machine. His body was found in March, 1989.

The troubled Los Angeles Community Development Bank on Friday lost the first of several lawsuits filed by former borrowers, a blow that could signal millions of dollars in taxpayer losses and further damage to the publicly funded lender. In a decision issued Friday, Superior Court Judge William J. Birney found the bank breached its contractual responsibility to its borrower and "directly caused the total loss" of Summit Industries, a manufacturer of counter tops and sinks. Birney awarded $7.

Silicon Valley Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of Silicon Valley Bancshares, has opened its first office in Los Angeles to lend to growing technology companies. Silicon Valley, which already has offices in San Diego and Irvine, lends to growing mid-sized companies primarily in the technology and science industries. The bank had a small office in Los Angeles that focused on entertainment, but that division will move to the new office in West Los Angeles.

Wells Fargo Bank, Union Bank of California and Bank of America have so far failed to deliver on their pledges to back the federal government's largest ever inner-city lending program, the Los Angeles Community Development Bank. A widely watched experiment in reviving depressed urban neighborhoods through loans to struggling--but promising--entrepreneurs, the development bank counted on the big institutions' commitment to lend $210 million in areas such as Pacoima and South-Central Los Angeles.